Hello Weirdone-Back in the games

My name is Dawn and I'll be reviewing your item in connection with "Gang's Monthly Review Board"  [13+] and the "I Write in December-January-February"  [E]. These are just my thoughts and forgive me if I ramble. Thank you for sharing your writing.


Title:
The title is simple and to the point. It's nice in a way that it tells what the poem is about while at the same time informing the reader of the form all within two words.



Overall Comments:
Content wise, I really liked what you have in this little poem. Not keen on some of the delivery, which I'll discuss further down, but I like the overall words and topic, even the question at the end, which works well in the piece.



Form:
Have to admit, I tend to stay away from sonnet forms and such almost as much as I wish I stayed away from ones with syllable counts when writing so I wasn't as familiar with the form as I should be considering my years of poem writing. Looks like you did well following the form, from what I can tell. Maybe having the form at the bottom of the poem, and prompt if there is one, would be a good idea for readers who are unfamiliar with the form so they would know what it involves. I am still working on doing this with my own poems but it can be a nice touch and most contests don't count that part in the line or word count, and having it at the end, after the reader has read the item is a good spot for such.



Rhythm/Rhyme:
Looks good from what I can tell. The rhythm is okay, flowing throughout the poem with only slight stumbles on parts I mention in the suggestions part of this review. The rhyme scheme looks correct and makes sense.



Favorite Part:
Small child in winter likes to run and play.
She loves to feel the snowball's icy kiss.



Other Comments and Suggestions:
These are things I noticed and have suggestions for but are all based on my own opinion so you can take what will help you and leave the rest at your own convenience.

Black Bear in Winter, In his cave so deep, - Capitalization in this part of the sentence seems unnecessary, especially since it isn't carried over to the other stanzas. It might have been the prompt and thus you wanted to emphasize it, but since that is not mentioned anywhere, it's not something I can tell as the reader who knows nothing about the contest. With something like capitalization in the middle of a sentence you want to make sure the reason for it makes sense and that you are consistent or else it just looks like a mistake.

She loves to feel the snowball's icy kiss. - This is okay but I kind of wondered about the word choice when it came to the snow. I don't think of snowballs as having an icy kiss because it makes me think of snow packed into a ball and thrown at someone. I would think you were going more for snowflake and maybe that would be a better word for this line.

This is a personal opinion, but in general I'm one of those that are against the use of colored fonts for the most part when it comes to stories, poems or even reviews. There are times and places where I don't mind it but most of those are in things like contest and forum pages and not actual writing. On the rare occasion a poem using one color, or a couple words colored for a specific reason in a writing makes sense. But I especially am not for random coloring like I've seen in some reviews and stories where paragraphs are all different colors but there is no apparent reason for the color choice. I know that the color font is a bit more "fun" but I have a couple reasons for the ant-color viewpoint.

1. For the readers - some fonts and colors are harder for the reader, especially online. Some of the bright colors (yellow is a big no but some of the pinks, oranges and such can be hard too) will be difficult for some readers and depends on their eyesight, computer, browser, etc. Always have to keep the reader in mind to small degree at least, even if we write more for ourselves because on here others do sometimes read them.

2. Professional aspect - For the most part, publishers expect stories and poems to be submitted in a simple black text on white format, so I always tend to keep that in mind.

While fun, I just don't see the reason for the color use in this particular poem. Like pink for the bear one? I don't see a reason. Brown maybe though the bear you talk about is the black bear. Only pink ones I know of are well... care bears. The purple is the only one that sort of relates to the topic in the stanza but even that is iffy. Granted as I said before, this is all my personal opinion. I know some love to do different color fonts for no noticeable reason, but I'm not one of them.


Long winded review, but I will add, overall you did a good job with the poem. The color was distracting but in general, you have a nugget of something good with this poem and think with some minor polishes it could be considered for some publishers who do poetry. Good luck with the contest and keep writing.